Texas Family Awarded Millions in Lawsuit Over Health Issues Related to Fracking

This entry was posted by Dale Stone on April 24, 2014 at 4:34 pm

A Texas family was awarded nearly $3 million in a lawsuit against Aruba Petroleum, alleging that the Plano company’s hydraulic fracturing activity made them sick and forced them to leave their property.

The drilling method known as fracking uses huge amounts of high-pressure, chemical-laced water to free oil and natural gas trapped deep in underground rocks. (AP/Pat Sullivan)

Bob and Lisa Parr of Wise County, Texas, alleged that ground water contamination, airborne pollution and other wastes associated with fracking for natural gas and other drilling near their 40-acre ranch caused migraines, rashes, dizziness, nose bleeds and other symptoms in their family, pets and livestock. The issues began in 2009.

The Parrs filed the lawsuit in 2011 and a jury sided with the family this week.

“Many studies have shown the adverse health effects on those who live or work near these sites, but those findings haven’t really changed anything,” the family’s attorney David Matthews said in a statement. “This verdict is a game-changer. It should make fracking operators stand up and take notice.”

Attorneys for the drilling company pointed out that there are more than 100 wells within two miles of the Parr ranch.

The win could embolden others who claim to have experienced health issues as a result of fracking to file their own lawsuits as well.

Though a 2013 study found that fracking at a western Pennsylvania drilling site didn’t contaminate drinking water, it didn’t necessarily prove that such drilling couldn’t lead to pollution because geology and company practices could vary.

A jar holding waste water from hydraulic fracturing is held up to the light at a recycling site in Midland, Texas, Sept. 24, 2013. (AP/Pat Sullivan)

Another study recently blasted the federal government for underestimating the emissions that result from fracking. The study estimated that in 2008, the U.S. poured 49 million tons of methane into the air. That’s more than the 32 million tons estimated by the EPA or the nearly 29 million tons reckoned by the European Commission.

Yet another study investigating tremors in Ohio found that the high-pressure injection of sand and water in fracking had a “probable” link to increased pressure that could have caused the shakes.